By: Shehu Suleiman Kayode.
Nigeria is fast becoming or already the theatric stage where comic performers perform to relieve their audiences of their pressing fusses. Each day, in Nigeria, is but with its funny drama. Before a funny play ends, another one ensues. I am worried if the country’s custodian(s) cares about what is kept in their fold. They play with the lives and properties of the citizenry. Who will help reawaken their souls to the truth and make them realize that the country is now in the care of callous persons? Who?!
Day-in, day-out, heart soothing news is hardly heard and rarely come by. News that sobers the heart is what fills the country. If it’s not rape, drug abuse, fraud, kidnapping, it would be an interreligious fight or ethnic crisis. It’s not a pleasant period in this country. Nothing is cool even if we try to fake it.
While Nigeria is still on her knee, striving hard to wrestle against COVID–19 pandemic, Boko Haram insurgency, another sardonic pestilence –Kidnapping, is fast finding back her stem in our home. Kidnapping is not new though but it has never this rampant in the past. People cannot walk freely as they want. You cannot sleep with your two eyes closed because of the evil ones. A whole lot has been heard in the past about kidnapping and how kidnappers had put the country into ransom. Trading humans for capital. As if the past had not fed us enough, what we see in this new dawn where many of us had thought we have capable leaders and safe in their hands Is disheartening. Common men’s lives and properties are at risk. Our leaders endanger our lives with their nonchalant attitude or incompetency.
Just a few days back, the news of abducted students of Government Science College, Kagara, staff, and some Niger state officials rented the air. Bandits/Gunmen were reported to have invaded the school, carted away with students and some other people. Demanding a sum of money. Niger state and Nigeria at large were up and committed to ways of setting the abductees free from the hands of the gruesome abductors. The president ordered the Nigerian troops to do all they could to set the abductees free and bring them home sound, hale and hearty. The affected State (Niger State) under the auspices of Governor Abubakar Sani Bello was also anxious to get them out of the darkness they found themselves.
What is expected to have been an applaud for the Federal Government, Niger State government and the Nigerian is earning them series of ceaseless slaps from the citizenry? The troops sent on a mission to rescue the abducted citizens alarmed that they are on a mirage mission since they could not locate the bandits’ abode. Sadly, what our uniform men can’t do, Shaykh Gumi is doing to shame the country and portray it as a clueless nation. If the ones paying for the protection of lives and properties can’t guarantee us that, and Shakh Ahamad Gumi is doing on their behalf, is the nation not in the pool of doom?
As earlier established in this piece that Nigeria has turned to a cinema house or a theatric stage is no joke. The play is boldly contained in the dramatic show by the Niger State Government who sought the help of a Niger Islamic cleric by the name, Shaykh Ahmad Gumi to help negotiate with the Bandits. Shaykh Ahmad Gumi and other state commanders met with the bandits’ leaders and their meeting was fruitful (as claimed). Gumi, after the meeting, advocated for a blanket amnesty for the bandits from the Federal Government as the bandits agreed to set the abductees in their fold free. The question is, should such be granted to people who fuel the ember of fear and unrest in the country? If a group is considered and left uncharged for the offense, will other souls not ply their ways and later seek amnesty?
It is pertinent to state that Nigeria is no more safe for all and sundry. If Nigerian forces, in whose care is our safety, are not sure of our safety and an ordinary acclaimed cleric is saddled with ‘meeting bandits’ responsibility, then our leaders are a failure. Such a step is a display of incompetency and a show of shamelessness. This is not Nigeria we all bargained for. A Nigeria that assures our safety is what you promised not the one that seizes our breath.